Jul 4, 2014

Intel’s next-gen Broadwell architecture, which employs 14nm technology, will make a real life debut towards the end of the year.

At Computex 2014, Intel already showed prototypes of super thin and sleek tablets taking advantage of the upcoming Core M series processors based on Broadwell. Compared to their Atom cousins, these new chips are more powerful, but less so when contrasted with the Core i series. Anyway, the upcoming lineup has three distinct versions coming, including the Core M5Y70, Core M 5Y10 and Core M 5Y10a. However, these might not be the final nomenclature, and we might end up seeing the chips arrive on the market sporting names like Core M 70 or something of the sort. The Broadwell “Y” parts arrive with 2 CPU cores and 4MB of L3 cache. The 5Y10 and 5Y10a models will be able to run at 800MHz with the integrated GPU following suit at 100MHz. The microprocessors will take advantage of Turbo Boost, as you can see in this tablet provided by CPU-World. The CPUs bundle VT-d virtualization, which is quite an advanced feat to have onboard. Virtualization solutions allow users to run multiple operating system and application to run in independent partitions all on a single computer.

The 5Y10 and 5Y10A work with DDR3L and LPDDR3 memory and data rates going as far as 1600MHz. Intel rates the microprocessors at 4.5Watt, but the 5Y10 also arrives with a configurable TDP feature, allowing it to run at a lower 4Watt TDP. Last but not least, the 5Y70 has 2 cores and takes advantage of Hyper-Threading technology, which allows the processor to run 4 threads at once. The chip also has Trusted Execution and Vpro. It supports DDR3L/LPDDR3-1600 memory and has 4.5Watt TDP. Its frequency can be raised in Turbo mode to 2.6GHz. It’s pretty cool that these new chips will be able to normally run at a very low frequency, but when the need strikes, the Turbo Boost feat will be able to bestow double the power.

Anyway, now that we know the details of these chips, we’re quite eager to see the first products embedding the architecture arrive into the wild. Intel already teased the Llama Mountain 2-in-1 device, in 12.5-inch and 10-inch flavors but ASUS appears to be the first device maker to have actually taken up this reference design. The Transformer Book Chi T300 is one of the first consumer-ready Core M products, and if we’re lucky, we’re going to be seeing it on retail shelves just in time for the holiday season.